Posts From Michelle McWilliams

Balintore Castle: restoration romance and a message from beyond the grave

Balintore Castle near Kirriemuir in Angus – a little fixer upper taken on by David Johnston. The Baronial style castle is A listed and was designed by architect William Burn. Built in 1860, it was abondoned to dry rot in the 1960s and lay empty until 2007. Now Johnston is painstakingly returning the building to its former Victorian splendour and detailing the process in his fascinating blog. David explains his motivation for embarking

Falkirk's finest up for the Scottish Album of the Year – again!

For the second year in a row, Falkirk has produced a contender for the Scottish Album of the Year. Last year the prize was taken home by Aidan Moffat and Bill Wells. This year, jazz pianist Euan Stevenson and Glaswegian saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski’s genre bending jazz album New Focus is on the longlist for the prize alongside stellar names such as Emelie Sande, Calvin Harris, Admiral Fallow and Django Django.

Tuning in to Tenement TV

BalconyTV films bands from balconies around the world. The Black Cab Sessions films from black cabs. Fittingly for Scotland, Tenement TV is recorded in a tenement flat. In 2011, aged 23, Chae Houston,  started filming bands from his flat in the west end of Glasgow with the help of his flatmates – cameraman Jamie Logie and Paul McJimpsey. At the start, Paul, who has a promotions company, used his contacts

Fife Garden Trail: new for 2013

Fancy taking a stroll through some of the prettiest and most interesting gardens in Fife? Newly launched for this summer is The Fife Garden Trail. Nine gardens, all different in size and style, will be open to visit from 1 May until 30 June. The trail includes Gilston House at Largoward, Willowhill near Newport-on-Tay, Logie House in Crossford, Earlshall Castle in Leuchars, Barham House in the Bow of Fife, South

Celebrities photoshopped as regular people: good for the soul

We knew this. We knew that if for one moment celebrities ceased their plucking, extracting, lifting, coiffuring, tanning, whitening, tightening, training, dieting, styling and general burnishing, they’d look just like the rest of us. The images here, the work of artist Danny Evans under the name Planet Hiltron, nail celebrities’ real world looks. Evans cleverly recognises that the very beautiful and the very young – Angelina Jolie, Rhianna, Kristen Stewart

What Ali Wore: street style of a (not so) Young Turk

Those guys on The Sartorialist aren’t even trying. Check out ‘What Ali Wore‘, an affectionate record of what Ali, an 83 year old tailor who lives in Berlin, wears every day. Australian waitress, Zoe Pawton, 29, started to look forward to seeing the outfits of the immaculately dressed man who passed her cafe at 9am every morning. Eventually she asked if she could take his photo and the Tumblr blog,

The Birks – a state-of-the-art ‘Cinema Paradiso’ for Aberfeldy

Did Sir Norman Foster get as much pleasure from designing The Gherkin as architect Robin Baker did from designing Birks Cinema in Aberfeldy? It seems unlikely. ‘It’s been such a privilege to work on this project and now that it’s finished it will feel like a bereavement. For the past 18 months it’s been my life.’ But Robin, who lives in Aberfeldy, will soon be able to watch movies at

Scotland's literary heroines edge back into the light

‘I am always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever and of finding my own story and my own people all forestalled.’  Jane Austen, 30 April 1811. Its strange to think of Jane Austen doing a disservice to women writers but it seems that the sheer weight of her legacy has been such that some of her female contemporaries – equally of not more successful in their day

Rankin’s Cafe and Deli, North Queensferry, Fife

‘Between 92 and 96 degrees is the perfect water temperature to make coffee’ – so says barista-trained Derek Rankin who opened Rankin’s cafe/deli in his home village, North Queensferry, Fife. The barista classes were run by his coffee supplier, Mathew Algie, one of the few companies to have a coffee roasting plant in Scotland. Barista classes are open to the general public/ non-customers of Mathew Algie at a cost of